Winter Flames
by Charybdis
Summary: Follows Tanith Lee's Winter Flowers. Original character thrown in for sake of plot device. Language gets a bit rough


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N.B. This is based of the short story _Winter Flowers_ by Tanith Lee. If you haven't read it you probably won't understand a damn thing that's going on. That's quite alright, just go out, find a copy of _Isaac Asimov's Vampires_ and come back when you've finished it. Even if you don't come back read the original story, its absolutely amazing. Now, on with the show.

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How do you remember me Maurs?

As I wish to.

You don't do you?

Remember you?

Wish to.

What I wish is irrelevant. I do what I must.

You always did.

Does that upset you?

Did it before?

I had never thought to meet him again. He rode away at the end of whatever war it was we had fought, his men around him. Out of one war and into another. Dark days are made for our kind, for his kind. He rode away on a horse he had taken from a dying warrior. A man that might have been him but for destiny's whims. His men followed him on stolen mounts of their own, food for when times grew too lean even for the wolves. 

_You found it then?_

You need to ask?

You were wrong.

Was I?

You survived didn't you?

Did I?

Don't be a fool.

I am a man of my word.

A man?

He cried in his sleep. Johan knew, Lutergi knew, now I did also. He threatened to kill me if I even breathed it to anyone else. He feared the wolves, saw them circling. He pressed his dagger to my throat. He was naked, his skin reflecting the light of a near by fire the same way his darkened blade did. Steel kept unpolished for night work, flesh kept dull for illusion. My acquiescence drew blood. He watched it collect in the hollow of my throat for a moment before falling on it like a starving man. A wolf too long without food is a dangerous thing. I was ill for a week after that.

_Who?_

Bollo, Lutergi.

And you.

And me.

All for a handful of words?

Words are chains.

You forged this yourself though.

All the more reason I can not break them.

They were disappointed when I rose, even those who claimed loyalty to me. Leadership is easy to covet. His eyes followed me among the men. He stood and watched, knowing I could feel him doing it He sensed his mistake and made no move to correct it. I was driven mad by each days fight; the reek on the swords, the hauberks, on my skin. I didn't sleep, I couldn't. I wandered, alone, often armed with just a dagger, begging someone to either cause enough pain that it was forgotten or end it outright. Arpad would have taken me up on it, did. The stones left marks on my back where he threw me. His fingers left marks on my hips as he held me down. 

"I know what you are. I will make it better. Take what comes and I will make it better."

I never did. An angel with black hair that absorbed all light saved me, an angel with a dagger left unpolished, an angel who smelled of wood smoke and wine, and angel I had seen twist a man's head from his body when driven mad with the battle lust.

"Stupid bitch," he whispered as he drew me off the ground, away from Arpad's battered body. Still alive, despite the violence done to him.

"I should have killed you when it was easy," said the angel as he pressed his mouth to my hair.

_Did I lay a bond on you then?_

I laid it on myself.

The only kind you can not break.

To leave you alone now would be too wicked for even my soul.

I was alone before I knew you.

That was before.

So you've ruined me.

Yes.

He did something no one had ever done to me before, he held me. Nothing said, nothing explained, just wrapped his arms around me and braced his back on a shattered tree trunk. All night. He smelled of blood. Not the way he smelled of wine and wood smoke. They clung to his hair and skin. The blood smell came off of him like sweat off another man. The sky was cove grey. 

"What did you do?"

"Something I haven't done in centuries."

"It's true then, what the others say of you."

"Yes. I should have killed you. I took too much, had I finished it…"

"Am I like you now?"

"You will be."

He was silent again until the sun rose, until the camp stirred. He pushed me away and turned toward the west. 

"Tonight, here," and then he was gone. The snow ran in eddies from the swirl of his cloak.

_Why?_

I don't know.

It's not finished yet you know.

Of course.

I'm incomplete.

Good.

The night was colder than all of the others before it. Colder perhaps than any that would ever come after. I can't remember. He explained it to me, the fellowship of his kind, my kind now. The loneliness binding them to one another for centuries. I might have wept, but for the chill he left in my heart with his words. I was damned now, truly. He did not offer me a place with his band, I did not ask for it. I did not speak to him at all. I learned that I must taste living blood to finish that which he had started by mistake. I left him standing beneath that tree, wreathed in dead leaves.

The sun rose. The fight rose shortly after it. The walls fell at last. Men, like so many rats falling upon a corpse slipped from the gravedigger's wagon, descended on it. I collected my share and handed my band over to Simon. If I were to be a wolf I would be one alone. He caught me as I slipped away from the sack, pinned me to an alley wall with his hands and his eyes. 

"Something is coming toward us. Something even I can not imagine. I have seen it in the corridors between sleep and waking that are forgotten in the light. It will destroy us. But before it does know that I will set right what I can of the evil I have visited on you."

He pushed me away from him then as though my skin had burned his hands. I spent the rest of the day and night in that alley, wrapped in my cloak numb with cold and possibility. He rode away that morning, past my place, surrounded by his men. And with his lips he bid me, remember.

_So now you will you set right what is wrong?_

What I made wrong, yes.

He reached out, caressed my face with the tips of his fingers. I could not stop myself leaning into the feeling. 

I am a fool, you should have had better. 

His lips molded themselves to my forehead, cold as the snow outside the door.

Bear me no more ill will. 

His grip tightened. I did not see the world fade; my eyes were already shut to it.

Maurs emerged alone into the fading sunlight. Lutergi handed him the torch without a word. Bollo was a different matter.

"What are doing?"

"What I promised I would."

"She was never even properly one of us!"

"All the more reason then." Lutergi had to stop Bollo openly attacking Maurs then.

"Think boy," he hissed into the younger one's ear. "She could not survive in the limbo between us and them. Would you doom her to be this? Would you have rather had her die like Pierre? Or worse like our brothers?"

Bollo subsided. All the rage drained from him so suddenly that he would have fallen had it not been for Lutergi's grip. Maurs had turned away, and was now setting the small cabin ablaze. Bollo turned and stumbled away as the flames created a bright tableau against the dark pines. Lutergi approached his captain with the caution of one faced with a wounded and trapped wild thing.

"You did love her."

"I might have, once."

"Then this is good."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I might have loved her before, before that tower and the woman in it. I told you once that I had never loved anyone as I loved her then. But even after, I could not part with Kyna. I could never love now, but neither could I let her go. I had promised her freedom from my mistakes. I gave her that."

"So you destroyed her."

"I destroyed the last piece of me bound to this place."

"Go with whatever god will have you then."

"And you my friend."

No tears stained his eyes as Lutergi walked away from his captain. Maurs had said it once, 

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"Tears run dry, like luck, and the fucking rivers."

The maiden in the tower had her lover now, he and Bollo had what was left of the stinking world of men, and Kyna, Kyna was free of all the mistakes that world had placed on her.


End file.
